How sad and silly to hear the sniffing and snorting of the paleocon pundits as they scurry down the ratline of what they see as the listing USS McCain. Chief among the rustling rodents are Peggy Noonan and George Will, their calumny akin to squeaking for Obama and his vast stores of government cheese. Ms. Noonan, caught unaware with her comrades on an open mike, revealed her elitist contempt for Sarah Palin in a flash. She has subsequently made tepid attempts to redeem her image with more measured commentary, but the stink of that Boston-NYC-DC brie is on her breath now and betrayal is never forgotten. Now, inspired by Chris Buckley's sudden embrace of Obama's utopian fantasy, George F. Will excoriates the Republicans for "faux conservatism" on a series of issues including the invasion of Iraq, McCain's campaign finance fiasco, and the "carelessness" epitomized by the selection of Gov. Palin. The fallacy embraced by Will, Buckley, and Noonan is identical to the one which the Obamites extol: If only we choose the "right kind of people" the dusty reality of real conditions in the field can be fashioned into a conservative Eden. Will labors to critique Palin's ignorance of Senate collegiality and the fine points of whether she might follow Mike Mansfield’s prohibition of LBJ attending a Senate caucus, and then uses that to argue it exemplifies McCain and Cheney as "constitutionally careless" sponsors of such a rustic simpleton. Will ignores what McCain has learned at Hard Knocks University, "First, you have to survive."
This political fight is not for prissy analysts wearing bowties, who yearn for erudite Ivy Leaguers, and wax poetic about the Senate luncheons of yore. Will's justifiable concerns for the first amendment damage done by McCain-Feingold, is undone by his praise for Obama's mountain of unattributed "small" campaign contributions. A realist would at least suspect such massive loot might have foreign, Big Daddy influence peddlers behind them. These paleocon perfectionists are willing to let Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin go down along with their long professed philosophical ideals, in an Obama triumph. We hear no contempt for the beltway buffoonery of Biden's gaffes or his slippery, insider policies. Nor do they offer any critique of what a socialist Obama regime might mean to our Republic. "First you have to survive."
Peggy, Chris, and George would no doubt be "...shocked, shocked to learn..." that the Fairness Doctrine was reinstated to silence their brethren in competing media, that personal 401k plans have been confiscated, and private health plans nationalized. Their hissy fits over Palin will appear petty alongside the massive expansion of state authority that the likes of an Obama administration filled with radical leftists will produce. As for me, I'll trust in McCain and Palin, two who can weather the blows and survive, over bespectacled wimps in tasseled loafers.